Classic Music Overhaul

[Uthgaard]

I'm currently working on a full restoration of classic music.

The client used for P99 is missing some instruments from its soundfont, because back when sound cards were still a thing, they came with their own instrument banks built in.

Since we don't use sound cards today, this causes the music to come across choppy, and sound like it's missing some things. It's a relatively simple client-side fix however, and here's a video of some before and after comparisons so you can hear the difference for yourselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I__3xM0aSyA

As the next part of the overhaul, I'm working on adjusting the sound emitters so that the music actually plays when and where it should, instead of cutting in and out unpredictably.

Once complete, I intend to release the changes as a a standalone modification at a bare minimum, depending on whether or not there's enough interest to make these part of the core classic changes.

[Skarne]

Believe it or not the music, to me, is one of the defining experiences of classic EQ. Thanks for doin this

[Jimjam]

Agreed - the music really did so much to inform the ambience of different areas.

[Jafir]

That would be awesome. I tried installing Omnimidi with midimapper and using a soundfont file, but my midis went from playing strangely to not playing at all now.

[Ananka]

You're doing important work here.

[Zuranthium]

The p99 Rivervale music has never sounded like either of these for me. It's always overlapped with itself or something, like the file is corrupted. Very disappointing.

About Erud's Crossing - the Kerran drums and pipe instruments deserve their own section, but the main part of the melody is better right now. It's so soothing. That plus a short wind pipe note added in every 30 seconds or so would be my ideal.

[Uthgaard]

The p99 Rivervale music has never sounded like either of these for me. It's always overlapped with itself or something, like the file is corrupted. Very disappointing.

About Erud's Crossing - the Kerran drums and pipe instruments deserve their own section, but the main part of the melody is better right now. It's so soothing. That plus a short wind pipe note added in every 30 seconds or so would be my ideal.

I'm not actually changing anything about the music files or composing music here. Just supplying the missing information the client needed to interpret the midis. Basically the rivervale music was playing without tuba or trombone because the default soundfont expected a sound card to supply those.

For the combat music, more than half the instruments were missing, for the same reason, etc. (including drums, bassoon, harp, timpani, acoustic bass, flute, others)

Of course at the time there was more than one brand of sound card on the market, so there will be slight differences in how things sounded on different clients, but the most readily available soundfont ripped from a soundcard is the soundblaster AWE32.

And everything sounds better than the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth which comes default with windows now.

[mcoy]

Definitely interested! I actually play with the music disabled most of the time because it's just wrong.

-Mcoy

[Lilcea]

I'm currently working on a full restoration of classic music.

The client used for P99 is missing some instruments from its soundfont, because back when sound cards were still a thing, they came with their own instrument banks built in.

Since we don't use sound cards today, this causes the music to come across choppy, and sound like it's missing some things. It's a relatively simple client-side fix however, and here's a video of some before and after comparisons so you can hear the difference for yourselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I__3xM0aSyA

As the next part of the overhaul, I'm working on adjusting the sound emitters so that the music actually plays when and where it should, instead of cutting in and out unpredictably.

Once complete, I intend to release the changes as a a standalone modification at a bare minimum, depending on whether or not there's enough interest to make these part of the core classic changes.

I did somthing similar years ago but due to lack of interest I only did a few zones. The first zone I did was Ocean of Tears. I think I was the first person on twitch to steam the boat ride from Freeport to Butcher with working boat music.

I tried to revive what I was doing back in July 2020 but due to lack of interest moved onto other things.

You can find the post Here (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363470) feel free to use the soundfont it's complete with the missing instruments.

Good luck with this, converting then editing the emt files can get laborious ;)

[Encroaching Death]

HUGE improvement!

Especially on that second song.

It's like the original tracks are leaving out parts of the percussion or something.

I will definitely turn on music once this is done.

[Uthgaard]

I did somthing similar years ago but due to lack of interest I only did a few zones. The first zone I did was Ocean of Tears. I think I was the first person on twitch to steam the boat ride from Freeport to Butcher with working boat music.

I tried to revive what I was doing back in July 2020 but due to lack of interest moved onto other things.

You can find the post Here (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363470) feel free to use the soundfont it's complete with the missing instruments.

Good luck with this, converting then editing the emt files can get laborious ;)

Yeah I've seen several attempts at altering this over the years, all taking the same general approach (some files are lost to time).

It sounds like you took the same approach and filled in the missing instruments into the original synthusr.sf2. Sound quality is good. I'm actually happier with yours than where mine is at this stage.

But one thing that I've done this time around is start to really dig into the emt / eff files, figure out what some of the unknown values actually do, and discover some of the limitations of the emt filetype that the eff file doesn't have.

Currently working on a tool to edit the eff binaries directly, since they support about 4 more functions than the emt filetype does.

Feel free to chat me up in the discord about this.

[Ooloo]

This is awesome, I too am a huge nostalgia nerd for the original vanilla music. I was always disappointed that kunark and velious didn't have any music.

Only thing I've noticed on p99 is that music just randomly stops and starts over prematurely. Like running through west karana along the shoreline, that song (I think its also the toxx music) gets about 50 seconds through and just abruptly starts over. The music is the best part of making that horribly long run!

[Jimjam]

No music? Kunark had sea gulls, mate!

[Jibartik]

https://i.imgur.com/eU95kAR.gif

edit: whoah 2:40 (https://youtu.be/I__3xM0aSyA?t=161) kicked in and im underwater immersed in super EQ n64 donkey kong country, and loving it.

Gimi a 10hr video of this track please? Not kidding :o

[Nutell_Woodson]

I love the idea of this. Really interested in hearing the with fun instrumentation.

[Lilcea]

Yeah I've seen several attempts at altering this over the years, all taking the same general approach (some files are lost to time).

It sounds like you took the same approach and filled in the missing instruments into the original synthusr.sf2. Sound quality is good. I'm actually happier with yours than where mine is at this stage.

But one thing that I've done this time around is start to really dig into the emt / eff files, figure out what some of the unknown values actually do, and discover some of the limitations of the emt filetype that the eff file doesn't have.

Currently working on a tool to edit the eff binaries directly, since they support about 4 more functions than the emt filetype does.

Feel free to chat me up in the discord about this.

I originally did my sound font in 2013. I think it was around 2015 I started messing about with my own Everquest server. That's when I came across the utility on the EQEmu site for converting the sound files. I never really took it any further or dug any deeper into the sound files. As I said in my other post after lack of interest I stopped working on the emt files. I’m very interested to see what you do with your utility.

Do you plan on hosting it on Github or something similar?

I’m currently working on UI’s for P99, EQ Live and EQ2 at the moment. If your going to make the tool available I’d be more than happy to find time to try and do some zones.

As you mentioned Discord, If you have a Discord server for keeping track of your project I would be interested in joining would love to see this completed.

[Uthgaard]

Only thing I've noticed on p99 is that music just randomly stops and starts over prematurely. Like running through west karana along the shoreline, that song (I think its also the toxx music) gets about 50 seconds through and just abruptly starts over. The music is the best part of making that horribly long run!

Yeah so that is a problem with the emitter files. I've already sorted out that one currently "unknown" column is whether you should continue to hear a sound while indoors.

The current emitters operate via spheres of a set radius. If they overlap they restart the audio. So the only way for wk to have workd continuously without restarting, without also covering the entire zone with a massive radius, is for one of the unknown values to have extended the shape, or have flagged it not to restart the music if it's the same xmi.

As you mentioned Discord, If you have a Discord server for keeping track of your project I would be interested in joining would love to see this completed.

https://discord.gg/p1999

I'm just on the p99 discord, I don't have a special one set up for this.

[mcoy]

Thank you for your work on this! I know it's all popular domain and available and whatnot but experiencing it in-world like we did almost 25 years ago really does bring you back.

Thank you!

-Mcoy

[Uthgaard]

Only thing I've noticed on p99 is that music just randomly stops and starts over prematurely. Like running through west karana along the shoreline, that song (I think its also the toxx music) gets about 50 seconds through and just abruptly starts over. The music is the best part of making that horribly long run!

The spotty music along the West Karana shoreline was the precise thing is that made me decide to start the overhaul.

The titanium client currently only supports spherical emitters of a given radius. So I came up with some fancy math in order to have music play constantly from from one end of the zone to the other, limited only to the shoreline, by basically making a massive sphere far outside of the zone itself, so that the sphere's edge blanketed the shoreline in exactly the right places.

This is demonstrated at the beginning of the video, followed by a stroll down the shoreline to show that the music successfully plays in all the right places - and nowhere else.

https://youtu.be/nHTw0BIBGvk

Enjoy

[System Shock]

If your working with the emt files, do you think its possible to get the other 2 combat midis and the Bard instrument sounds to play as well?

[Old_PVP]

I KNEW something was missing from the Rivervale soundtrack. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it just wasn't how I remembered. This is a very cool project! Thanks for doing this and I hope it gets implemented.

[Uthgaard]

If your working with the emt files, do you think its possible to get the other 2 combat midis and the Bard instrument sounds to play as well?

We've been talking about this, and several other sounds.

If there's anyone out there who is particularly proficient at C# with a GUI:

Current main focus is making this tool to directly edit the eff binaries, but I am really not a code dev. I have the functionality written, but need to get visual studio to stop crying about little details like variable scope and minor syntax.

Someone who actually works with C# could probably resolve the little stuff in a matter of minutes, where it's many hours of trial & error and learning for me.

[Encroaching Death]

https://i.imgur.com/eU95kAR.gif

edit: whoah 2:40 (https://youtu.be/I__3xM0aSyA?t=161) kicked in and im underwater immersed in super EQ n64 donkey kong country, and loving it.

Gimi a 10hr video of this track please? Not kidding :o

I found a 36 minute version of it:

ZPikCYEKFSM

[Uthgaard]

If there's anyone out there who is particularly proficient at C# with a GUI:

Current main focus is making this tool to directly edit the eff binaries, but I am really not a code dev. I have the functionality written, but need to get visual studio to stop crying about little details like variable scope and minor syntax.

Someone who actually works with C# could probably resolve the little stuff in a matter of minutes, where it's many hours of trial & error and learning for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcqg0ngFcIo

There are still some minor bugs to work out, and readability improvements to make, but there is now a GUI for direct editing the *_sounds.eff binaries without incurring the losses which happen during conversion to plaintext .emt

Still room to help polishing up the code though if anyone is interested.

[Simani]

i am checking this topic almost everyday, and hoping Uthgaard could really solve this sound problem completely.

[Uthgaard]

i am checking this topic almost everyday, and hoping Uthgaard could really solve this sound problem completely.

https://i.ibb.co/6r2ThjX/development.png

What I really need right now is some extra eyes and hands working out the C# on the editor tool:

https://github.com/Uthgaard/EffEditor

Details from the readme:

Current issues: The final line of the import process tends to zero out UnkRef00 or misplace its value into UnkRef04, depending on the total length of the binary. This is the only incorrect value, no others in the row get misplaced when that happens.

Current development needs: Once the import bug is corrected, convert the values back to the native binary and rewrite the eff file.

[Chris1479]

Somebody help this man! EQ needs its original music restored to its full glory!

[Krazzeekane]

Is this project dead then?